June 30 deadline approaches for property tax rebates

A bill passed by the House of Representatives and sent to the Senate would make it a little easier to claim funds from a popular property tax rebate program, but an amendment that would also have increased the mount and the number of people who could receive, was defeated on a party-line vote according to state Rep. Mark Painter, D-146th Dist.

The overall bill, which Painter also voted to support, would extend the deadline for application from June 30 to Dec. 31; doubles to $10,000 the exemption for death benefits when calculating income to determine eligibility; and allows the executor of an estate to apply for the property tax rebate if the property owner was eligible on the date of death.

But an amendment supported by Painter and other Democrats also would have added $100 to the maximum in each of the four income categories already in place as well as increasing the eligibility ceiling from $35,000 to $45,000.

The money to pay for the additions outlined in the amendment would have come from taking $57 million out of the Pennsylvania Lottery’s $100 million surplus, according to Painter.

Advertisement

“My constituents have made it clear that high property taxes are one of their top concerns,” Painter said in a press release.

“While we have yet to achieve consensus on how to fund education through another means, without hurting school district budgets on a statewide basis, we had an opportunity to reduce the burden for many people through an expansion of the highly successful property tax/rent rebate program,” Painter said, adding, “however, the majority party decided to vote against helping the taxpayers.”

According to the Department of Revenue, more than 411,000 Pennsylvania homeowners apply for assistance through this program and 79,805 of them qualify to pay no school property taxes at all.

Painter’s Sanatoga office, 600 Heritage Drive, Suite 102, just off High Street in Sunnybrook Village in Sanatoga, can offer assistance to residents of the 146th District with applying for the program before the June 30 deadline.